How to: Make Modern Perforated Christmas Trees » Curbly | DIY Design Community. These look like the porcelain ones from West Elm, nice job.

12 Days of Christmas Gifts | Mighty Girl. Love!

MinuteFrame: Order a framed photo in less than one minute. This one is the service of a friend of a friend, and I have not tried it but it looks so darn handy. Very simply you upload a photo to have printed at the 5×7 size, they do the printing and framing and ship it to your giftee.

mirrormirror: Christmas Cupcake Decorating at Trophy Cupcake. Paola includes tip numbers and notes on technique for some fancy cupcakes. They look great Paola!

Calvin and Hobbes Snowmen Truffles · Edible Crafts.

Festive Topped Jars at You Are My Fave. Simple and very impressive! Via Edible Crafts.

Felted Bell Ornaments – the purl bee. So sweet.

Have you seen this amazing Gingerbread Brownstone made by Kitchen Table Scraps? Even better, she shows how to make it including shaping the rounded front windows, adding all the detail and lighting it from the inside. Super greatness.

German Pyramid Cake – The Crafts Dept. Eeek, I want one.

Peppermint Rice Krispies Treats · Edible Crafts. I love the candy cane hook so they can hang on the mug, so clever!

Christmas Tree Meringue Cookies | Bakers Royale. Reminds me of the Christmas tree Duchess potatoes.

Gingerbread Playdough Homemade Gift for Kids · Edible Crafts. I want some of this.

DIY Holiday Gifts Advent Calendar – CHOW.

Sprinkle Bakes: Christmas Coal Candy. Via Edible Crafts.

The 2011 Good Gift Games and Good Gift Games Greatest Hits – The Morning News.

I’m away all week visiting family back in the good old Midwest so I won’t have any Thanksgiving updates unless I manage to find some wi-fi. So, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and I wanted to remind you of this very smart tip on brining a turkey in your fridge without taking up all the space in your fridge that I learned over at Savory Sweet Life — brine it in a turkey sized oven bag and keep it in one of the crisper drawers. Awesome right? Here’s a not very lovely photograph of mine last year:

Eyeball Tableware | CraftGossip.com.

The Sexy Zombie Vampire Halloween Makeup Tutorial | The Hairpin.

Martha Stewart’s Haunted House! – The Crafts Dept. Love.

Spooky & Playful: The Best Halloween Treats for 2011 | Apartment Therapy The Kitchn. And, hooray, they included my Tentacle Pot Pies!

Wrapping Up a Night of WitchCRAFT | Make and Takes. Full of good Halloween projects. (Wish I could have joined you ladies!)

Eyeball Cookies · Edible Crafts. Very simple and wonderful.

Phobias on the IPAD – The Crafts Dept. Do you see those ghosts? They’re amazing, and simple.

Sprinkle Bakes: Pumpkin Cheesecake with Sugared Pumpkin Seeds, at Sprinkle Bakes. The pumpkin seed decorations here are sorta spooky.

These are photos of the test Zombie Head Cheese we created, thus the poor lighting and the two kinds of cheese. But I wanted to show you the idea for a tongue that I decided to skip.

I carved the tongue from a block of Spam I had coaxed out of the can as a whole rectangular chunk. Know what? Spam is surprisingly easy to carve. It’s also very slippery.

The tongue was ghastly. And since the skull wasn’t secure in order to keep the jaw open it tilted to one side when we attempted to scoop some cheese off. Eeek.

In the end I decided to drop the tongue made of Spam in part because it was slippery and in part because it smelled too strongly for me to recommend. But, if you want to have a go at making a Spam tongue it is really effective.

I made you something for Halloween. You can serve it a party. Or maybe make it as a snack for your viewing party of The Walking Dead.

These are both made of soft cheese spread on a plastic skull. Easy. Creepy. Delicious. That is, if you can get people to dig in.

Version 1

You know that old trick of unwrapping a block of cream cheese and topping it with soy sauce and some sesame seeds? Yum right? I added some food coloring and a life sized plastic skull and called it Halloween worthy.

(This is version #1, a slightly easier version is just below.)

First get a life sized plastic skull (wash it really well), some soy sauce, one 12 ounce tub of cream cheese spread and some food coloring. Tint the cream cheese to a fleshy color, I used about 15 drops of red and 10 drops of yellow here.

I found a plastic skull like this one at a local party supplies store, but I really wish I’d managed to find a plastic skull where the top of the head is removable. Something really frightening could be made with that. Spinach dip brains anybody?

Then add just one drop of blue food coloring and stir only a few times until the blue appears streaky. Less is more here, it will further streak as you spread it. Now, frost your skull like a cake. Start with the tricky bits around the face first. If you can’t hold the crown of the head to stabilize the skull it makes it much more complicated. Try to keep the teeth clean.

A detail of the blue-streaked cream cheese.

I used a small flexible spatula to spread this. There is no need to be tidy here, the messier the grossier. Grosser? Grossest? You know what I mean.

You can also stick a few rectangles of parchment paper surrounding the head so you can be a bit messy while frosting and then pull them out after you are done, a trick I learned about frosting cakes. If you can putting the head on a smaller plate on top of a larger plate will be useful to catch the fake blood, and it will be easy to artfully arrange the crackers. Saltines are the traditional cracker for this but these more artisanal crackers I found looked like creepy bandages and still have that bland and salty taste you want. You can frost your head a few hours early and refrigerate. It’s amusing to sit nearby and observe as unsuspecting people open the fridge.

Cocktail onions create nice dead eyes.

Just before serving mix a bit of soy sauce with some drops of red food coloring and drizzle it over the head so that is streams down. I used a pipette but if you don’t have one handy a small measuring cup with a pour spout or a carefully wielded spoon will work just as well. If you can get the soy sauce to pool around the onion eyes, it looks extra creepy that way. Also sprinkle on some bugs, I mean, toasted sesame seeds.

It’s even scarier after it’s been eaten. Yikes.

Version #2

This is version #2, it’s slightly less involved. You just need spreadable cheese, cocktail onions and a plastic skull. Let’s face it, just about any pink or orange tinted spreadable cheese will look suitably disgusting.

I used this cheese that has reddish port wine streaks in it. I didn’t manage to capture the reddish colors in these pictures as well as I hoped but I promise it was pretty gross looking.

I’m smitten. What should I name it?

(See also: The Outtakes wherein I attempt to carve a tongue from Spam and am entirely too successful.)

Eye Popping! « bakerella.com. The two newest Halloween cake pops, eyeballs and spider nests, are simple but so effectively creepy!

Everything You Need to Know About Carving a Pumpkin | Serious Eats.

How-To: Brains in a Jar Cake @Craftzine.com blog.

Halloween Panna Cotta · Edible Crafts. Eyeball!

Cupcake Ghosts · Edible Crafts. Cute, and they look easy to create.

How to Make a Delicious Glow-in-the-Dark Punch for Halloween – CHOW.

A question about zombies. Specifically, Zombie Stories. Extra specifically, Zombie Stories that Don’t Suck. | Ask MetaFilter. Zombie book recommendations.

Gross, And I Mean Gross, Halloween Recipes · Edible Crafts | CraftGossip.com.

Spider Cake in a Jar · Edible Crafts | CraftGossip.com. I love how they topped this jar!

Modern Parents Messy Kids: Handmade Halloween: Make Spider Sack Decor with the Kids. A very clever take on the string wrapped balloon thing.

Modern Parents Messy Kids: Handmade Halloween: Etsy Costume Roundup.

Take This Halloween Costume Idea … Please | The Hairpin. Scott and I have dressed up as ceiling fans before. All it took was a trip to Joanns for some t-shirts and iron on lettering. Silly but easy.

How to Make a Spooky Halloween Mirror | The New Home Ec.

Sprinkle Bakes: Breakfast for Dessert: Boiled Custard Eggs, Shortbread Soldiers and Coffee on a Stick. More faux eggs, via Edible Crafts.

Hungry Happenings: Fun idea for an Easter Brunch – Carrot Crescents Filled with Egg Salad. These are so cute.

Hot Cross Buns | The Pioneer Woman Cooks | Ree Drummond. Yum.

Bread roll chicks | Flickr. These knotted bread roll chicks are adorable. I couldn’t find the specific entry but they are from The Secrets of Our Supper.

Minimalist Pysanky @Craftzine.com blog.

Felt Carrot pattern, at I Make Stuff. (Warning: PDF). I love the line of stitching that dds a bit of detail to these.

Bunny Fold Napkins at Martha Stewart. This is an old one but a good one and it’s been popping up on Pinterest lately. And I like it as a last minute way to add Easter decoration.

For Easter I made papier-mache polka dotted eggs.

I made small pinatas using water balloons and tissue paper.

I filled them with candy, then sealed them shut.

You can also put toys or notes inside.

They have to be ripped to open them, which is way fun.

Click here: Papier-Mache Easter Eggs to find (much) more detailed instructions on how to make them.

I’m going to experiment with using more images in links posts. A lot of these were found using Pinterest, which I have been liking a lot.

Minimal Easter Eggs at Pickles. Very simple idea decorating eggs using white puffy paint, I love this.

Homemade Cadbury Creme Eggs | Not Without Salt. These adapted a bit from the Instructables project but I like these because she uses Golden Syrup, which I’m having a bit of a crush on at the moment.

Wheat Grass at Design Mom. Good practical tips for growing wheat grass as a project for Spring.

Crepe Paper Surprise Carrots, at Martha Stewart. Just like surprise balls and pretty darn cute.

Secret Message Easter Egg, made by Present&Correct and seen over at Poppy Talk. This is so sweet.

Pixie Dust Easter Egg favor, at Family Fun. A very cute idea.

Cake baked in egg shells! Genius! At Delicious Days.

May luck surround you today. And may you find a heap of gold.

Also a quick note, the how-to for the Leprechaun Trap Cake has been posted, you can see how the rainbow got inside (hint: magic).

This may look like a perfectly innocent cake meant to lure a leprechaun to the top but it has a few secrets.

Secret #1: Beneath the pile of gold coins are fragile bars, when the leprechaun approaches to grab the coins he’ll fall into the pit and be trapped.

Secret #2: There is a rainbow hiding inside the cake. The leprechaun will discover this as he eats his way to freedom.

Have you heard of Leprechaun traps? I hadn’t encountered these until this year, and I am completely charmed by them. Leprechaun traps are created by kids in order to lure and trap a leprechaun. They are often a craft or sort of science experiment, there are some amazing ones collected here at Geek Dad. You can see plans for some at Family Fun (including the one that inspired my cake), and a round up at How Does She.

I decided that my angel food cake pan, with the hole in the middles, would make an excellent shape for a leprechaun trap. As bored kids growing up in suburbs we used to make traps similar to this for each other by digging a hole in the ground then covering it with a few fragile branches, a layer of leaves and finally topped with some loose grass to hide it. I’m shocked nobody ever broke an ankle.

To read the complete how-to for this cake please click on MORE.

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Tips for Making the Perfect Souffle, with Pictures | giverslog.

Sweet Tooth: The Best Box of Chocolates Ever. I love the small cake covered in gold lustre dust, via Twig & Thistle.

Get Your Valentine Make On at Design Mom.

Valentine’s Day Treat Packaging – The Crafts Dept.

AnnaTheRed’s Bento Factory » How to make a heart shaped egg. Most awesome. Via Rakka Deer on Flickr.

Mega•Crafty: Doily Pops. Great way to make white chocolate lollipops with some very helpful tips. Via Edible Crafts.